120mm Fan Roundup: 17 Fans Compared

17-Way roundup of 120mm fans from different manufactures including Scythe, Aerocool, Nexus, GlobalWin, Spire, Coolermaster, Papst, Coolink, Acoustifan, mCubed and AC Ryan. We test their performance both temperature as noise wise - and include sound samples of the fans running at different voltages so you can compare them head to head. Are all fans created equal? Let?s find out.

Introduction & Features

Introduction

Today I have roundup of 17 different 120mm fans for you, with a focus on finding a good noise/performance I’ve measured noise production using a dBA meter, a high end microphone and also tested each fan on a large CPU heatsink to see how much air it pushes (low/high CPU temperatures).

This is a to the point roundup offering you many facts and figures and I’ll try to sort through the results with you by splitting up the test results in different sections.

First it’s time to meet the contestants:

Specifications

These are the official specifications of the different fans, clicking on the fan name will take you to the product’s webpage.

If you are going to use one of these as a CPU heatsink fan you might want to know how much the fan weighs, as there can be quite a difference. If you have large case a longer cable length will give you more freedom. Most fans come with mounting screws and 3-to-4 pin adapter, but not all. To help reduce vibration noise some manufacturers are providing rubber rings, or custom rubber mounting kits. The “life” value for each fan is taken directly from the product page and has to be taken with a grain of salt. Last is the visual aspect of the fan, some come with LEDs and light up when powered.

The tower case was placed on its side and the temperature tests were done without the side panel installed; I placed a small thermistor probe above the CPU cooler to measure in-take temperature.

in-take temperature was measured at 25°C for all tests, but temp fluctuations, and user error can account up to 1-3°C of inaccuracy in the obtained results. Please keep this in mind when looking at the results. Each fan was tested repeatedly; if I got questionable results the test was restarted.

Noise level of each HSF combo was recorded with SmartSensor SL4001A, the sensor was placed ~10cm away from the fan. The lowest dBA reading in the test room was 34dBA without fan running in the system.

System was stressed by running K7 CPU Burn for 30min ; this application pushes the temperature higher then any other application or game we’ve yet encountered. Speedfan was used to log maximum obtained temperatures.

Noise samples were recorded with a high quality directional microphone approx. 1cm away from the fan’s motor.

Official Specs vs Own Measurements

With an ambient noise of 34dBA I recorded the fan noise 12v from ~10cm while the fan was installed on top of a Thermaltake Big Typhoon. The RPM was measured through the fan header on the DFI NF3 motherboard.

Official dBA

Noise@10cm

Official RPM

Measured RPM

AC Ryan Blackfire4

28.95

61.00

2000

1918

AcoustiFan AF120C

34.00

59.30

2000

1962

AcoustiFan AFDP-12025

24.70

53.30

1500

1520

Aerocool Turbine 1000

19.66

41.70

950

893

Arctic Fan 12

23.50

52.20

1500

1592

Coolermaster ALU AAF-B12-E1

23.00

50.30

1200

1288

Coolermaster LED Silent TLF-S12

22.00

47.70

1220

1180

Coolermaster Ultra Silent SAF-S12-E1

13.00

41.30

720

Coolink SWiF-1201

17.00

47.00

1200

1260

GlobalWin 1202512L

19.00

44.70

1300

1172

mCubed X12

27.00

54.00

1750

1607

Nexus D12SL-12 (black/white)

22.80

41.10

1000

917

Papst 4412 F/2GLL

18.00

46.70

1300

1241

Scythe S-FLEX SFF21D

8.70

40.60

800

844

Scythe S-FLEX SFF21E

20.10

46.70

1200

1223

Scythe S-FLEX SFF21F

28.00

52.70

1600

1577

Spire FD12025C1E3

22.00

46.90

1200

1214

As you can see from the results, the official dBA readings don’t quite reflect those from the manufacturer, this is of course due to the testing environment, theirs is tested in a soundproof room where the ambient noise is <15dba and the dba meter is placed 1 away at a 45°c angle. fan also hung up in mid-air – this makes it not even quite close to real operating environments where ambient noise most definitely higher, as you can see here. my result for nexus comes closest official one, only ~18dba difference ;-).

RPM wise the difference between my results and official specs is a lot smaller, the mCubed X12 gave the largest fluctuation, close to 150rpm less then officially specified. While the Arctic Fan runs almost 100rpm faster than advertised.

I’ll try to summarize the results of each fan so this review won’t be a 17-page beast. On the next page I’ll round up the 12v results for all fans, with enough details and sound clips to please the information-hungry.

name of the fan @ voltage

Small click-able thumbnails to let you know what the fan looks like as well as show any specialties

CPU tempdBA reading and RPM monitoring

a wave chart which can be clicked to download a small .mp3 noise recording

Subjective noise rating where I placed my ear next to the fan: more “+” means louder and more irritating motor noise

-- other comments and remarks --

For the 7 and 5v result I’ll use a table (since you know what the fans look like by then) to display things more clearly.

So let’s start of by taking a closer look at the fans and see how they do at 12v ->